Here
is a truth you don’t often hear in the newspapers, on television or in the
halls of Congress, but it is a truth we must face, especially as the Trump
administration appears to be marching us closer to armed conflict with Iran:

And
that truth is that far too often American intervention and the use of American
military power has produced unintended consequences which have caused
incalculable harm.

Real
American power is not demonstrated by our ability to blow things up, but our
ability to forge international consensus around shared challenges.

A test
of a great nation is not how many wars we can engage in or how many governments
we can overthrow, but how we can use our strength to resolve international
conflicts in a peaceful way.

And it
is almost beyond impossible to imagine that after the horrors of the war in
Iraq — a war that upended the regional order of the Middle East and resulted in
an untold loss of life — that this administration would put us on such a
dangerous path toward more war. But everyday we see a new story about how this
administration is trying provoke conflict, like sending huge bombers to the
region, or raising the possibility of sending more than 100,000 troops.

Apparently
for some, almost two decades of constant war is not enough.

Well,
unfortunately for this president and people like John Bolton who love endless
wars, the constitutional authority for declaring war rests with the United
States Congress — not the president –– no matter if that president is a
Democrat or a Republican.

And it
is long past time my colleagues in the Senate reassert that authority. That is
something I tried to do with my colleagues to stop our involvement in the war
in Yemen, and it is something we must do again as the president marches us
toward war with Iran.

One of
the first speeches I gave in Congress was about the first war in Iraq in 1991;
a war I voted against.

And
what I said at the time was that our challenge at that moment was not simply to
begin a war which would result in tremendous suffering and death, but that the
real challenge was to address international conflict without war and bloodshed.

It
seemed to me that it would be a terrible failing, and very ominous for our
future, if we could not solve that problem non-violently when virtually the
entire world was united against one small country. And that if we were not
successful in that effort, all this world would have to look forward to in the
future would be war, and more war, and more war.

There
are a number of parallels to this moment in time.

Today,
our most important allies are committed to preventing the possibility that
Iran’s undemocratic regime could ever obtain a nuclear weapon.

That
is what the Iran deal was all about. And that was why it was such a reckless
mistake for Trump to withdraw from the Iran deal, as even his own top security
officials said at the time. Rather than remain united with those allies,
Trump's approach has actually isolated the United States from them, undermining
the important consensus that the Obama administration helped forge, and raising
the possibility of conflict.

And it
seems to me that, once again, if we turn our backs on a non-violent solution in
favor of more military conflict, that we will find ourselves in perpetual
warfare. Mark my words. A war in Iran would make the Iraq war look like a walk
in the park. It will be an unmitigated disaster.

So
Congress must intervene and utilize its constitutional authority — before it’s
too late.

Throughout
the world today, hundreds of millions of people live in abysmal poverty while
the arms merchants of the world grow increasingly rich as governments spend
trillions of dollars on weapons and war.

Our
job is to offer a different vision — a vision that one day human beings on this
planet will live in a world where international conflicts are resolved
peacefully, not by mass murder.